Rural Women in Leadership: Positive Factors in Leadership Development

By Lori Ann McVay

* Takes a new slant on an increasingly important development issue
* There is a noticeable gap in extant literature concerning positive factors beneficial to rural women’s leadership development. This book addresses that gap through a concentrated focus on the presence of such positive factors and the ways in which they contribute to the success of rural women in overcoming barriers to leadership.
* The dynamic relationship of External and Internal Factors is highlighted through distillation into five Key Factors cited by rural women as not only supportive of their leadership development, but also as crucial to the development of aspiring rural women leaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: CAB International
• Release date: Sep 18, 2013
• ISBN: 9781789244489

Book preview

Introduction

In April 2010, the European Forum on Women in the Sustainable Development of the Rural World put forth its recommendation for ‘Promoting gender equality and the participation of women in the decision making bodies of key organizations in the elaboration, management and monitoring of rural development policies’ (European Forum: The Role of Women in Sustainable Development of the Rural Environment, 2010). Five months later, a paper presented to the European Parliament in Brussels further highlighted recent focus on rural women as illustrated by the European Commission’s concern with gender equality in developing the 2000–2006 and 2007–2013 Common Agricultural Policy (Bock, 2010b). This European context, rich with possibilities for the advancement of rural women, provided an ideal milieu for research into their leadership development.

Northern Ireland – with its vibrant rural communities and dynamic network of rural women’s groups – supplied a rich localized site for this study. The six Rural Women’s Networks in Northern Ireland – and an umbrella organization, the Northern Ireland Rural Women’s Network (NIRWN) – provided a natural starting point for identifying participants, as their directors and other staff members fit well within the profile of rural women in leadership. And though not all rural women in the region are involved with the Rural Women’s Networks, the networks actively promote the advancement of Northern Ireland’s rural women at local, regional and national levels. This promotion is greatly needed, given the continued presence of gender inequalities and inadequacies in the areas of child-care, transportation, employment opportunities and training (Shortall, 2003; Rural Women’s Networks, Northern Ireland Rural Women’s Network, 2007). The networks, along with Northern Ireland’s Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD), have called for leadership development in rural areas as a crucial means of addressing these and other pressing issues. This study was therefore undertaken as a means of ascertaining the key factors facilitating the development and acquisition of leadership skills among women leaders from rural areas of Northern Ireland. Two secondary questions guided the research design. First, what people, organizations and/or events supported these women’s development and acquisition of leadership skills? And, secondly, what thought processes and choices did they exercise in order to overcome obstacles in their development as leaders? As a matter of situating the study within current academic dialogue, research began with a review of pertinent literature.

Identifying the Gaps

An examination of sociological literature relevant to the topic of rural women in leadership¹ revealed several points of note. Much valuable sociological research has focused on rural women, particularly in the last fifteen years. Similarly, women’s participation in organizations and leadership has also benefited from sociological research. However, the intersection of those topics – rural women in leadership – has received considerably less academic attention. Further, the studies that do exist focus primarily on obstacles and barriers to rural women’s attainment of leadership positions. Such studies are crucial for their identification of negative factors that must be addressed. Nevertheless, they are also limited in their potential to positively impact the situation of rural women aspiring to, or serving in, leadership positions. For many of these women, this negative focus may contribute to a feeling of frustration. It leaves unanswered the question of how they are to address and overcome negative issues, and leaves unrecognized the existing resources with which to do so. In considering these points, two important gaps in extant literature become quite obvious: a low number of studies focusing on rural women in leadership, and a nearly complete lack of studies identifying and examining positive factors contributing to rural women’s leadership development.

Addressing the Gaps: Conducting Research

This research addressed the gaps identified above in two ways: by providing insight into the developmental processes of rural women leaders; and – most distinctively – through the identification of positive factors beneficial to their leadership development. As noted above, the focus on positive factors provided a means of exploring the contexts in which rural women can – and do – overcome barriers on their journey to leadership. It also served as a tool for the recognition and affirmation of rural women leaders’ powerful role as proactive change agents in their homes, communities and beyond. Interviews loosely structured around participants’ life stories addressed the following areas: personal and community identities, family and community relationships, leadership role models and mentors, education, religion, and leadership experiences within organizations. In addition to inquiries into their personal leadership journeys, the women were also asked what advice they would give rural women aspiring to leadership, and what type of support they would like to see aspiring leaders receive.

Analysis

Analysis was undertaken utilizing the ‘Listening Guide’ as developed by Brown and Gilligan and expanded in the 2003 work: ‘On the Listening Guide: A Voice-Centered Relational Method’ (Gilligan et al., 2003). In order to identify the Key Factors facilitating the development and acquisition of leadership skills among women leaders from rural areas of Northern Ireland, analysis of the women’s narratives incorporated listening for the entire range of positive factors they voiced as significant. Because the ‘Listening Guide’ is a voice-centred relational method, each of the interviews was transcribed in the ‘naturalistic’ mode (Oliver et al., 2005), including verbal starts and stops and vocalized emotional responses such as laughter and sighs.² Gilligan et al.’s method of analysis required multiple ‘listenings’ (2003, p. 159) to the transcripts in order to identify the various ‘contrapuntal’ (Gilligan et al., 2003, p. 164) voices present in individual transcripts and to hear the relationships among those voices through the recognition of their points of harmony and dissonance.

Overview

Chapter 1 offers an in-depth review of literature germane to the current situation of rural women leaders in Northern Ireland. It opens with a discussion of gender identities, relations and roles from the broad perspective of women’s studies, followed by a more narrowly focused discussion on rural women’s experiences of gender identities, relations and roles, with special attention given to the unique position of farm women. The chapter then addresses organizations and organizational constraints to rural women’s attainment of leadership positions. Subsequently, a brief sociological analysis of leadership is presented. This includes an overview of literature on women in leadership, and culminates with literature concerning rural women in leadership.

The methodological and theoretical underpinnings of the research are revealed in Chapter 2, including the details of the research design and profiles of participants. As a qualitative study, semi-structured, in-depth interviews were the primary method of inquiry. Participant observation provided insight into the cultural contexts of the women being interviewed, and the practice of reflexivity acted to highlight the researcher’s voice as it spoke in dialogue with the voices of participants in the interviews and writing up of the findings.

The emergence of findings is rooted in two case studies (Alice and Doreen), presented in Chapter 3. These studies are representative of the full process of analysis. Beginning with Alice and Doreen’s narratives, the presence of the Leader voice was identified in all twenty-two of the transcripts. This allowed for comparison of that voice across transcripts, resulting in the emergence of findings.

Chapter 4 begins with a discussion of External Factors in the participants’ leadership development. This, and subsequent discussions of Internal Factors and Key Factors, provides context for the presentation of each of the factors, which is divided into three major segments: External Factors, Internal Factors and Key Factors. This chapter utilizes an emphasis on the participants’ voices to define, describe and illustrate each of the factors.

The results of this study have significant potential to be applied practically, and to be utilized in the continued development of women leaders from rural areas. It is hoped that this book will be useful in both responding to and generating questions regarding the position of rural women in society and organizations, and that the findings will be of use to the growing body of policy makers concerned with supporting leadership development among rural women. As such, the book concludes with a summary of the findings and recommendations for further research and policy.

1

Situating the Study: A Review of Relevant Literature

Introduction

In the past two decades, sociological research in the West has witnessed a post-structuralist cultural turn that has opened new avenues of research to gender studies (Little and Panelli, 2003). Work influenced by this turn has not been received without criticism, particularly in the area of practical applicability (Cloke, 1997). However, the cultural turn’s contribution to gender studies is evident in its rejection of any essentialist thinking that would lead towards masking differences between people of a given community (Little and Panelli, 2003). Thus, in order to properly introduce the context within which this study’s participants experience their identities as ‘rural’, ‘women’ and ‘leaders’, this review of relevant literature begins first with a discussion of work from the broader realm of women’s studies, narrowing to a more specific exploration of literature on rural and farm women. This is followed by a discussion of organizations and the constraints within which women operate in many organizational milieus, and an addressing of leadership as a sociological concept, including a discussion of the literature on rural women in leadership. Finally, the study is put into context with a portrait of women from rural areas of Northern Ireland.

1.1 Gender

1.1.1 Gender identities and relations

In embracing the resulting ambiguities of identity³ construction and reconstruction that followed from the cultural turn, researchers have been able to uncover a spectrum of shifting – and even multiple (Saugeres, 2002) – gender identities formerly hidden within generalized categories (Bock, 2006). Biology is no longer considered the singular source of gender, with some feminist thinkers having labelled existing ideas of ‘male’ and ‘female’ as arbitrary (McCormack, 1993). Such labelling is understandable, given the fact that women’s ‘nature’ has in the past been used as a source of domination by those who would claim that women’s social roles are prescribed by biology and are therefore unchallengeable and unchangeable (Lawler, 1996).

According to Adrienne Rich, this biological stance has moulded society’s expectations of women into unrealistic ideals of tireless caregivers to children and adult males (Lawler, 1996). Some feminist writers would lodge this expectation firmly in the realm of the family, noting it as a place where the facilitation of alternative gender relations is a near impossibility (Finch, 1996). According to Chodorow (in Crowley and Himmelweit, 1992), this situation is reflective of women’s childhood relationships with their fathers (mediated through their mother, since fathers are remote), and exacerbated by the increasingly isolated nuclear family, which has diminished women’s access to their sisters and mothers. Saugeres (2002) also writes that identity formation begins in early childhood (the very years in which many children are receiving the tireless care mentioned above). However, she notes that it is continually shaped through relationships by the recognition of difference between self and others. Further, McNay (2004, p. 177) posits that gender identities may only be recognized in the ‘lived reality of social relations’. Thus, the formative role of relationships of all kinds is a particularly critical component in understanding the construction of gender identity (Brandth, 2002).

Rejecting the view of women’s gender identity as biologically produced (and men’s as socially produced), many feminists have come to name society as the construction site of gender differences (McCormack, 1993). Simultaneously, feminist scholars warn against going so far as to fictionalize the category ‘woman’, as such a deconstruction would ‘deprive us of a position from which to speak as women, and a collective basis for struggle’ (Jackson, 1993, p. 5). In a similar vein, Cosslett et al. (1996) write that the constructedness of identities in no way diminishes the reality of experiencing them – a reality that is often difficult for women to navigate, given the contradictory positions created by decades of equating the word ‘person’ with ‘male’ (Howell et al., 2002). In response, a number of feminist scholars have embraced the concept of ‘intersectionality’, which requires inequalities to be examined as they appear across different social contexts and in relationship with the vast variety of women’s lived experiences (Risman, 2004). Nevertheless, while women as individuals and in organizations have long fought against pervasive forms of domination, new forms emerge and become ensconced even as the old are torn down (Bartky, 1993).

1.1.2 Gender roles

In a social system where the domination of women is continually resurrecting itself in new forms, sex roles are produced and reproduced to reflect this dynamic (Sanday, 1993). With childbearing and child-rearing (nature/biology) still commonly viewed as determinants of women’s proper social roles (Lawler, 1996), and housework and childcare still being performed primarily by women (even those who work outside the home) (Keith and Malone, 2005), it is a short leap to McCormack’s statement that ‘There would not be the social ferment over gender roles in Western industrial societies today if a substantial number of men and women did not subscribe to the thesis of universal female subordination’ (Jackson, 1993, p. 85). Whether or not that thesis stands is a matter of contestation (Sanday, 1993). Nevertheless, women who mentally subscribe to feminist dissent against subordination may remain in exactly such a situation out of emotional commitment (Grimshaw, 1993).

In a 1993 study on women who worked full-time, Walby discovered this same attitude towards housework undertaken in addition to their outside work (Walby, in Henig, 1996). Despite the isolation of housework (as compared with the communal atmosphere of outside work, which many of them enjoyed), the women she interviewed not only viewed it as an expression of the love they held for their husbands and (in many cases) children, but saw it as appropriate for women to do this work and became defensive of their families when Walby attempted to broach the subject of their home workload. The women in Walby’s study, by their outside work, stand in contrast to women who work exclusively in the home and accept that their efforts belong to a ‘separate sphere’ of work (Henig, 1996). Conversely, these same women who work outside the home still have both feet firmly planted in the domestic sphere, believing in the necessity of being solely responsible for the housework. This interaction between women’s outside (paid) and home (unpaid) work has been described as the central concept in understanding women’s experiences of being treated unequally to men (Truman, 1996).

Fourteen years after Walby’s research, Cunningham (2008, pp. 1–2) described the results of a longitudinal study linking gender ideology and housework. According to the study’s results, the second half of the 20th century saw an increase in the number of women in the labour force paralleled by a decrease in their household duties. Interestingly, ‘their support for gender differentiated family roles’ also fell (Cunningham, 2008). In linking gender ideology with participation in the labour market, Cunningham argued that women with egalitarian attitudes towards gender roles were more likely to have jobs outside the home and, further, to work longer hours than less-egalitarian women who worked outside the home (Cunningham, 2008). Additionally, women with young children were less likely to be employed (Cunningham, 2008). These occupational choices affect short-term job arrangements, but may have long-term consequences as well, since traditionally a long-term career is only offered as one continuous path of full-time employment leading to ever-higher levels of responsibility. Thus, women are often denied admission to the highest levels of organizations, regardless of their experience and skills (Truman, 1996).

Within the home, men’s and women’s tasks are still highly segregated (Keith and Malone, 2005). Women are often conscripted into similar roles in their outside work as well – caring roles that are unrecognized and unrewarded (Adkins and Lury, 1992). Even as women enter professional worlds such as law and medicine in increasing numbers, gender roles and inequalities transform to maintain themselves (Truman, 1996). In some cases this is played out to the extent that, even in similar (or the same) job positions, work requirements may vary by gender, with women being seen as less skilled and therefore given fewer opportunities to gain new and more valuable skills (Lawler, 1996). Not only is gender itself a factor in women’s ability to gain new skills (and thus attain higher positions within organizations), but women’s unpaid work may also cause them to make occupational choices differently from men – especially when a wife and/or mother’s prospective job does not lend itself to easily accessible childcare and is not within an acceptable proximity of her unpaid work (i.e. the home) (Henig, 1996). Moreover, time spent in working in the home lessens wages – particularly for young and middle-aged women (Berik, 1996; Keith and Malone, 2005).

1.1.3 Summary: Gender relations, identities and roles

Issues regarding gender roles, relations and identities are present in all aspects of society, where they are produced and reproduced. Although feminism has brought many of these issues to light, this review of the broader literature suggests that most men and women continue to function in socially prescribed patterns. From this point forward, the literature reviewed will focus more specifically on the circumstances of rural and farm women.

1.2 Rural Women

The concept of a rural space has been defined in many and various ways. In seeking to avoid a loss of meaning of the concept of ‘rural’ altogether – and thereby a loss of place from which to speak in an active voice (Bell et al., 2010) – rural sociologists are faced with quandaries similar to the ones (noted in Section 1.1 above) faced by feminist scholars in their use of the term ‘woman’. While the rural community has come to be seen as a multi-faceted social construct with values defined by those who live there (Cloke and Milbourne, 1992), Bock (2006) observes that definitions of ‘rural’ are traditionally hegemonic and serve to reinforce power relations between genders. In spite of this, the popular image of rural dwellers as a close-knit, caring community persists, and expectations of finding such a ‘rural idyll’ not only draw people to rural areas to live but also serve to shape their behaviour while they live there (Little and Austin, 1996).

Rural sociology has come to look more and more to socially constructed gender identities as the source of men’s and women’s inequality (Little and Panelli, 2003). Present not only on farms, but in the broader rural community as well, is a persistent and pervasive image of women conforming to traditional gender roles (Silvasti, 2003). As an example of this, Brandth and Haugen’s (1997) analysis of issues of the Norwegian Society of Rural Women’s publication NBK-nitt from the years 1974, 1984 and 1994 reveals that, at base, the representation of women did not change. Women were safely portrayed as ‘caretakers and farm hands as well as participants in the rural community’. In similar research, Morris and Evans (2001) considered the Farmlife segment of issues of the publication Farmers’ Weekly⁴ from 1976 and 1996, and noted that the passing of two decades resulted in a shift towards business-focused articles, but that little changed in the representation of a clear division of gender roles into the male/female duality, with women’s businesses emerging as simply a commoditization of traditional household gender roles.

1.2.1 Gender relations in rural studies

The cultural turn in research also affected rural studies, creating interest in the role of communities in the production and maintenance of gender relations (Little and Panelli, 2003). Bock and de Haan (2004), in particular, note the close ties between rural gender studies and their sociopolitical implications. Gender